Bodega Association will fight profiling by NYPD

Ramon Murphy, president of the Bodega Association, says police are using fear to force store owners to give up their legal rights. (Ward, Jesse, Freelance NYDN/Ward, Jesse - Freelance NYDN)

The Daily News recently published a story about a very disturbing pattern of discriminatory enforcement practices by the NYPD — predominately against immigrant store owners whose businesses are located in black and Latino neighborhoods.

As The News reported:

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"Nine out of 10 nuisance abatement actions were against businesses located in neighborhoods where most of the residents are minorities. A large share of the alcohol cases were concentrated in just a few police precincts, even though there were others with equal or more underage alcohol sales that were rarely hit."

New York Daily News front pages of 2016

This kind of racial profiling is outrageous, especially since the de Blasio administration has made a priority of reforming police practices in minority communities. In fact, and with much fanfare, the city issued new guidelines to prevent racial profiling by the police.

Given how stores are being targeted, it looks as if some folks in the NYPD didn't get the training they badly need.

What makes this situation even more egregious is how the police are conducting the enforcement — intimidating immigrant store owners to forego their constitutional rights and sign consent orders that can put their livelihood and their long-term investment in jeopardy. In many cases, the stores are shuttered before the enforcement action has been properly adjudicated — a real example of how the process itself is the punishment.

The Bodega Association says they will use all the legal and political means to battle NYPD profiling. (Edwin J. Torres for ProPublica)

Put simply, the police are profiling the most vulnerable stores, and are using intimidation tactics that force the owners to give up their legal rights. This is emphatically unjust and we will be fighting back with all the legal and political means at our disposal.

Ramon Murphy is the president of the Bodega Association of the United States